Non-European OSCE Members Should Participate in Refugee Resettlement

Sergio Divina, Italian lawmaker, a member of Lega Nord Party, said that migrants should be relocated throughout all OSCE countries based on their religious beliefs and cultural traditions.

ULAN BATOR (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova — Non-European members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) should help their EU partners by participating in the refugee resettlement program aimed at easing the ongoing migrant crisis, an Italian lawmaker told Sputnik.

"Our party [Lega Nord] believes that all OSCE countries, including the non-European member-states, should take part in the refugee resettlement program," Sergio Divina, a member of Lega Nord Party, said Friday on the sidelines of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Mongolia.

Migrants should be relocated throughout all OSCE countries based on their religious beliefs and cultural traditions, Divina added.

"For example, Kazakhstan that has a vast territory and a low population density, with a Muslim majority, can host refugees from Muslim countries," Divina said, stressing that the European Union will obviously pay the costs of the resettlement.

The European Union is grappling with a migrant crisis as hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa, arrive in EU member states, fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries.

Over 500,000 migrants and refugees have arrived in the European Union since the beginning of 2015, according to the European Commission.